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Netflix To Lift Limits For Online Viewing

Fans of the Netflix option to watch movies online are getting a nice gift Monday: No more limits to how much you can watch via the Web per month!

Up until now, all Netflix customers were restricted to how many hours of streaming video they could watch, but under the new plan, only those who pay $4.99 a month will be restricted. Add this to the news that they are going to be releasing a set top box for you to stream movies directly to your television, and this could accelerate the consumer jump from tangible media to a disk-less existence. Perhaps we will soon be offering our apologies to Sony for the early arrival of rain on their Blu-Ray parade.

The timing of the announcement seems to be in reaction to the rumors that Apple will introduce iTunes movie rentals on Tuesday at Macworld. Though nothing is official yet, the rumors indicate that Apple rentals will be around $3.99 apiece, a difficult sale when Netflix customers can expect to have unlimited access to films online as well as get the benefit of continuing with disc rentals each month. Apple will likely need to rely more strongly on iPod/iPhone empire than they may have planned as a result of this imminent announcement.

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